Pacifism in Economic Analysis: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

This article presents some pacifist ideas developed in various economists' works since the origins of economic thought. The Classicals considered international peace to be a normal result (as well as a necessary condition) of economic development and human progress. Such a conception is also shared by other schools of thought, such as Utopian socialism or institutionalism. Some economists were active in the development of the pacifist movement before the First World War, which led to the organization of several international Peace Congresses. During the Cold War, certain economic studies on military expenditure and the arms race contributed to the denunciation of an excessive militarism. However, the post-Cold War disarmament highlighted the costs of the necessary peace investment. There is a substantial research agenda and a need for more academic economists to undertake analytical and empirical work in this important field.Pacifism, Liberalism, Veblen, Militarism, Peace movements,

Pacifism and Nonviolence: Discerning the Contours of an Emerging Multidisciplinary Research Agenda

“…Chenoweth and Stephan's award-winning book (2011) helped draw renewed interest in nonviolence both in the scholarship and beyond. But beyond this particular study, the literature that builds on it (e.g., Chenoweth and Lewis, 2013;Chenoweth et al, 2018;Chenoweth and Schock, 2015;Nepstad, 2015b;Pinckney, 2016;Schock, 2013), and the one that criticises it (e.g., Anisin, 2020;Gelderloos, 2013), the increasing recent attention of the academy has generally been quite multidisciplinary, including disciplines such as, for example: anthropology (Kelly, 2021(Kelly, , 2017Miyazaki, 2023;Sponsel, 2014); art (Antliff, 2020(Antliff, , 2015Brockington, 2006;Meskimmon, 2020;Sylvester, 2009); criminology (McEvoy, 2003;Ruggiero, 2014); economics and political economy (Cante and Torres, 2019;Coulomb et al, 2008;Solt, 2015); geography (Megoran, 2008(Megoran, , 2011Woon, 2014); history and historiography (Brock, 1972;Brock and Young, 1999;Castelli, 2018;Cooper, 1991;Cortright, 2008;Pauli, 2015); law (Lupu and Wallace, 2019;Maki, 1990;Murray, 2009); literature and languages (Peach, 2019;Wexler, 2017;White, 2008); media studies…”

A sort of homecoming?

“…Boulding, 1978). (The normative character of peace economics has been expounded by Isard, 1994, and also by: Arrow, 1995; Caruso, 2010; and Coloumb, Hartley, & Intriligator, 2008). Of interest, the authors discuss how private norms can work in preventing conflict even in the absence of state-commanded rules.…”